Mutant Frog Travelogue :: All posts (c) by author

Month: May 2009

To fellow bloggers and blog readers in Tokyo, Trans-Pacific Radio, which makes Japan-oriented podcasts, is holding a live edition of its political commentary series, Seijigiri, at the Pink Cow in Shibuya this Thursday at 7:30pm. To quote the men themselves:

The event will open with a presentation on Trans-Pacific Radio, followed by the live Seijigiri. After that, there will be a special announcement and demonstration of TPR’s most recent project.

The live show itself will involve Garrett, Ken and the audience. The essential concept is that Seijigiri and the audience will have no barrier between them, and the show will be an interactive event.

We hope to see all of our listeners on Thursday June 4 and look forward to doing the show with you!

I have just booked a trip home for the summer. I will be flying from Kansai to Newark on August 18, flying from Newark to San Francisco on September 10, and flying from San Francisco back to Kansai on September 15. While back home in Montclair, New Jersey (that’s the NYC end of the state) I may also take a brief trip down to DC at some point, so anyone in any of those areas who wants to meet up, please drop me a line.

Aside from that, I am also planning to take a trip over to Korea either before or after my visit back home to visit some friends there and do a bit of sight-seeing, so if any readers in Seoul want to meet up then, also feel free to get in touch.

Normally I don’t believe a word that Benjamin Fulford says, but this statement made off-hand in his latest blog post caught my eye:

Yukio Hatoyama, the head of the Democratic Party of Japan and likely winner of the July election made it a point recently to appear at a 911 truth conference. So Mr. cult leader, you know which way the wind is blowing.

Turns out, the first part of what he said is kind of true. According to Yukihisa Fujita, a DPJ Upper House member and leading proponent of 9-11 Truthism in Japan, Hatoyama gave a speech “representing the DPJ” at an event commemorating the release of Fujita’s new book, Seeking 9/11 Truth at Japan’s Parliament – Can Obama Really Change the United States? This was back in April when Hatoyama was still just Secretary General of the DPJ.

Hatoyama apparently encouraged Fujita’s campaign to open a new investigation into the attacks. According to Fujita’s report of the event, Hatoyama “remarked on the significance of investigating the source of this war on terrorism,” and directly quoted him telling Fujita during the speech, “You are ready to give your life for these efforts, aren’t you?”

I don’t think I need to remind my readers just how misguided and unhinged the 9-11 Truth movement is. But briefly, all the mountains of supposedly damning evidence can be toppled with just one simple fact – it’s only the small group of whackos in the 9-11 Truth movement who think there was a conspiracy. Of all the victims’ families, the firefighters, and the voluminous credible scientific studies of what happened, none of them have any motive to coordinate and join this so-called conspiracy.

It isn’t my intention to cast guilt by association. But if Fujita (and Ben) are claiming Hatoyama to be a fellow traveler I’d like to know where Hatoyama stands, considering how close he is to the premiership. As a potential representative of Japan on the world stage, I would recommend Hatoyama to forcefully renounce any connection to these dangerous fantasies.

When I checked the news sites this morning I noticed that Andrew Sullivan had linked to this clip of Krauthammer calling for Japan to “declare itself a nuclear state” in response to North Korea’s becoming a “nuclear power,” with the comment “yeah, China will go for that.” For me, the bigger question is whether Japan would go for that. Although the possibility of a nuclear-armed Japan is less taboo than it used to be thanks to repeated broaching of the topic by a loose coalition of right-wing political figures, the public at large is still strongly opposed. For example, a public opinion survey conducted in November 2006 shows 14% in favor, 78% against. Those numbers will likely be shown to have changed slightly in the inevitable followup surveys to come within the next week or two, but I would not expect a radical shift.

Incidentally, take note of Krauthammer’s phrasing: “negotiations with the Japanese to encourage them to declare themselves a nuclear power.” He seems to be working under the widely held assumption that Japan already holds all of the technology necessary to build a nuclear bomb (almost certainly true), and had secretly laid all of the necessary groundwork short of the final stops (possibly, but less certain) in such a way that they could have weapons ready within weeks should they suddenly become permissible.

But even if the technology is ready, I just don’t see it happening. Constitutional revision allowing a more conventional military is slowly becoming more and more possible, but decades of anti-nuclear education will not be overturned as easily, whatever the fantasies of American neo-cons.

Our frequent commenter Peter alerted me to the following travesty to 80’s music, which appeared in the 1984 Kohaku (“Red Versus White” New Year’s Eve song battle on NHK).

The translated title, Dakishimete Jiruba, is a bit cryptic at first. “Dakishimete” means something like “Hold me tight,” and jiruba is the Japanese transliteration of “jitterbug.”

I do not know what was wrong with Japan in 1984. But as it turns out, the only way to screw up this classic song even more is to have Hide from L’Arc~en~Ciel sing it in English. You might as well ask a random drunk in a karaoke box to try it.

South Africa’s rand, the world’s best-performing major currency this year, may rally another 4 percent if it breaks through 8.23 per dollar and stays there, based on technical analysis by Barclays Plc-owned Absa Capital.

Candlestick charting shows the rand closed stronger than its opening levels everyday last week, suggesting it’s “fighting” to appreciate further, said Judy Padayachee, a technical analyst at Johannesburg-based Absa. Even so, it has yet to remain stronger than the so-called “resistance” level of 8.23 per dollar, according to Padayachee.

Good for them. But thanks to this news I was pleasantly surprised at how awesome the rand looks. Buffalo power!

The notes were redesigned after the end of apartheid in 1994. Here is what the old notes looked like:

You can find out more about South Africa’s currency (with similarly intense drawings of lions and rhinos) here.

This song from the 80s has a definite “Japanese woman sings Bruce Springsteen” feel to it, right down to the E Street Band-style saxophone. For lack of anything better to do, I listened to this song about 20 times on the way back from the US recently. You might remember it was used in a recent beer commercial, though I forget which one.